Autism from the inside

Tag Archives: Right Hemisphere

When looking at autism “fruit salads” and function of both brain hemispheres it is interesting look at the difficulties in each area.

Looking at Donna Williams’ work on the subject of the differences between “Aspie” and “Autie” fruit salads was to do with hemisphere dominance and neglect a trade off between on or the other with “Aspinauts” being the “grey area” of in-between.

On a personal note I always thought she was on to something and looking at this simple table backs it up, consultancy observations, personal experiences and tireless effort to give people a better understanding of both DISablity and disABILITY with autism.

Again, RHD patients are unlikely to display the kinds of phonological, syntactic or semantic problems associated with aphasia. However, although they do not typically have many specific language problems, they definitely have difficulty communicating. This impairment seems to follow from an inability to integrate information; RHD patients apparently do not make adequate use of context in their interpretations of linguistic or nonlinguistic messages. They have difficulty distinguishing significant from unimportant information. For example a patient of mine when asked to describe the “Cookie Theft” picture card from the Boston focused on irrelevant features without describing the overall picture. Some aphasics with typical left hemisphere lesions present with executive function disturbance similar to right hemisphere syndrome.

Literal Interpretations

RHD patients may be able to comprehend only the literal meaning of language. Thus, they will often fail to understand many jokes, metaphors, irony, sarcasm, and common sayings that include figurative language. For example, if an RHD patient hears someone say that they are about to “hit the ceiling,” he might assume that the person is really about to begin striking the ceiling. Such a patient may also have trouble understanding indirect requests. For example, if he is asked if he “could open the window,” he may fail to identify this as a polite request and simply answer “yes” rather than opening the window.

These problems with figurative language may be viewed as one manifestation of the inability to base interpretations on context.

Difficulty identifying relevant information

When listening to a conversation or reading, an RHD patient may fail to abstract the main point contained in the information being shared. This happens in spite of the fact that, unlike an aphasic, the patient can understand all the individual words and grammatical structures used. For RHD patients, it appears that their comprehension of everyday language is impaired by a failure to distinguish important information from irrelevant detail and also by an inability to integrate According to Blake 2007, RH patients have difficulty comprehending non-literal language, humor, and multiple interpretations Furthermore, Blake says that their difficulty with language production includes: impulsivity, inefficiency, and egocentricity. She also says that the same problems are seen in traumatic brain injury.

Inability to interpret body language and facial expressions

In a conversation, RHD may miss out on important cues that should tell them about the emotional state and true intention of the person with whom they are interacting. This inability to interpret body language and facial expression may be related to an overall failure to use context in the interpretation of individual pieces of information. Problems with the interpretation of facial expression may also be due to the fact that RHD patients often fail to maintain eye contact with their conversation partners.

Flat affect

RHD patients may fail to display a wide range of facial expressions themselves. Also their speech is frequently aprosodic, or lacking variations in pitch and stress. Some patients will sound “robot-like,” and thus be unable to express emotion or changes in meaning via changes in intonation. These patients will no longer be able to vary pitch to signal the difference between a question and a statement or use word stress changes within a sentence to signal a difference in meaning.

Problems with Conversational Rules

RHD patients may fail to follow conversational rules, including those governing turn-taking, the initiation and closure of a conversation. RHD patients may tend to dominate conversations, as they are frequently verbose. They may also fail to properly estimate levels of shared knowledge, failing to give the listener enough background information to understand their statements. According to Myers and Mackisack (1990), RHD patients appear to not care about the needs of the listener. They, like children in an early developmental phase, may assume too much knowledge on the part of the listener; or not enough. They appear to answer without adequate search for the right answer. They also may fail to pick up on non verbal cues that signal listener’s reactions.

Impulsivity

RHD patients may exhibit poor judgment and problem solving abilities. They may require constant supervision due to a tendency to attempt tasks of which they are no longer physically capable. This may be related to anosognosia. They may also exhibit impulsivity in the sense of failing to censor the statements they make to other people.

Confabulation

RHD patients may make untrue statements. These do not usually seem to be deliberate lies. According to Brownwell et al. (1995), this may be the patient’s way of responding to his own confusion rather than attempts to mislead the listener

The Neuroscience on the Web Series:CMSD 636 Neuropathologies of Language and CognitionCSU, Chico, Patrick McCaffrey, Ph.D.

There tends to be a lower level of visual-verbal processing difficulties in this profile, social emotional agnosia, alexithymia, issues around a shared “sense” of social, self and other. Internal mentalising (to gain meaning) would make sense.

Left Hemisphere (Autism) “Fruit Salad”

Sensory disturbances, weakness or paralysis on the right side of the body. Read more.

There seems to be a higher level of visual-verbal processing difficulties, language processing disorder, sensory perctupaul agnosias, problem with a sense of “self” and other. External mentalising (to gain meaning) would make sense.

“Doing”in its extreme form can consist of over-thinking, over worrying, over-analysing losing grounded functioning and not being pre-occupied with too many things at once denying at times what is right in front of you tentative steps to be taken in the overburdens mind that consist of unwanted thoughts that sometimes never let on to being silenced. I am sure that that wanting to be a “be-er” may consist of flattening thoughts.

“Being” in its extreme form can be pre-occupied with the moment feelings of floating, connection to the situation with yourself, having an inner world to eagerly retreat to that consists of many colours, patterns, shapes and shine being jolted into to “doing” and conscious thought may well be difficult but can be achieved.

None of these things are distraction or detraction of cognitive skills although quirky and paradox like presentations may resume.

When people where to look at room, them may think what is going on it, things seem jumbled, cluttered untidy even! This maybe true but there are reasons for this – as a child my Mum thought I was deaf and blind as I say she was half right the “blindness” and “deafness” where to do with sensory perceptual disorders in my case visual and auditory agnosias.

Even now the way in which I map space and objects is very much on a tactile sensory based level (touching to perceive not processing meaning than touching) this means I do certain things to understand my surroundings

Myopia (short sightedness) in right eye – I had glasses (for shortsightedness) when I was around 5 years old guess what it made my visual agnosias and visual perceptual disorders more acute by magnifying the neurological perceptual distortions – something that James Billett pointed out who gave me tinted lenses in 2012 with glasses I got headaches, felt ill, heightened fragmentation with my tinted lenses all gone that is really saying something to me that we need to test for not only visual eye problems but neurological visual perceptual problems too.

Things of importance are always on display on a table top so I can “touch” perceive and use accordingly (simult and semantic agnosia)

I have a preference for things being on the left side of my body (hemispatial neglect to the right side of my body)

If I put things away out of touch for example in a drawer – I will “lose” them in both my mind and body and not know where to “perceive” them (semantic agnosia)

Moving around the room means I’m “mapping” the room with my own movements each touch is meaningful in term of getting a sense of myself and the room (visuospatial dysgnosia)

THE PHANTOM TEA CUP

Not that long ago I would was in my sitting room and made a cup of tea I put the cup on my “right side/blind side” this meant that I “lost” the context and concept of what and where the teacup was so I got another tea cup repeated the process and again and again in total I racked up about four tea cup once I investigated and perceived the right side I realised I had used four separate tea cups. 🙂